A paternity suit filed in New Jersey by a man contesting child support payments has taken an unusual turn, finding infant twins to have different fathers.
The man, known for legal reasons only by his initials A.S, had contested his paternity of the twins with regard to child support payments.
When the case came before New Jersey Superior Court Judge Sohail Mohammad, a paternity test was ordered. The surprising finding? The man fathered one of the twins, but not the other.
The babies' mother, known as TM, birthed the children in January of 2013 and named A.S as the father when she filed for benefits.
He contested this claim, saying their sexual relationship had not been exclusive. T.M did admit to sleeping with another man in the same week the twins were conceived.
The shocking results arrived in November, before a ruling handed down this week where Judge Mohammad said it was possible for a woman to have two of her eggs fertilised by two different men if she had sex with both during the same menstrual cycle. The phenomenon is known as heteropaternal superfecundation. The judge cited two other American cases which had appeared before the courts.
According to DNA expert Dr Karl-Hanz Wurzinger, the incidence of twins with different fathers occurred in about one in every 13,000 paternity cases involving twins.
A.S was ordered to pay $28 per week in child support payments for the baby he fathered.
